In this book, Katarzyna Kremplewska offers a thorough analysis of Santayana's conception of human self, viewed as part of his larger philosophy of life. Santayana emerges as an author of a provocative philosophy of drama, in which human life is acted out. Kremplewska demonstrates how his thought addresses the dynamics of human self in this context and the possibility of sustaining self-integrity while coping with the limitations of finite life. Focusing on particular aspects of Santayana's thought such (...) as his conception of the tragic aspect of existence, and the role of the doctrine of spirit in his philosophical anthropology and critique of culture, this book also sets Santayana's thought in substantial dialogue with other thinkers such as Heidegger, Bergson, and Nietzsche. Like Santayana's philosophy, this book seeks to build passages between theoretical reflection and practical life with the possibility of a good life in view. (shrink)

W eseju tym przyglądam się koncepcjom wojny i jej relacji do ludzkiej natury, kondycji, cywilizacji, tudzież immanentnej „struktury” władzy, autorstwa czterech dwudziestowiecznych filozofów – Arnolda Toynbee’go, René Girarda, Georgio Agambena i George’a Santayany. Zestawienie elementów tych teorii, a także krytyki kultury współczesnej, w którą wszyscy interlokutorzy się angażują, pozwala odkryć intrygujące punkty wspólne. Nawet jeśli niektóre analogie okazują się pozorne, to dyskusja rzuca nowe światło na zagadnienia takie jak związek między tożsamością a ofiarą, władzą a banitą, kłamstwem a systemem, czy (...) też każdą stabilną organizacją społeczną. (shrink)

The article analyzes Henri Bergson’s understanding of human life in the light of his metaphor of life as “insinuation.” Comparing his ideas with the ideas of another original thinker of the age, George Santayana, allows shedding light on Bergson’s ontological strategy of making matter– as a threat to life –subject to mediation. Memory and imagination use matter to play out the past in the guise of the present–for the sake of life. The text also focuses on the formulas of freedom (...) arising out of both thinkers’ conceptions of conscious life – that of Bergson, for whom the horizon and the fulfillment can be found in the beginning, or the primary vital impulse, and that of Santayana, who sees fulfillment in the forms of finitude assumed by each particular life. Looking at humanity in terms of a spiritual challenge links both conceptions. The whole discussion responds to the need to return to such fundamental but sidestepped terms as “humanity” and “spirituality”. (shrink)

The first comprehensive study of Santayana’s political thought as connected to his cultural criticism. It ranges over topics such as Santayana’s political ontology, his criticism of democracy, liberalism, and communism, his views on freedom and forms of human servitude.

There has been a long, surprisingly persistent tradition in labeling Santayana either as a unique and old fashioned figure of early twentieth century American philosophy, devoted to reviving metaphysics in a scholastic guise, or as a somewhat latent, closet pragmatist. This commonly held view was often additionally sealed in a dismissive way with the unpopular label of a quietist. In either case, the status of philosophical outcast was given to Santayana, echoing Charles William Eliot’s doubts as to the possible “usefulness” (...) of this “withdrawn man” for Harvard’s philosophy department. Recent scholarship, in its effort to rid Santayana’s name from the taint of this opinion, has proposed a number of interpretations.. (shrink)

At the end of the 20 century, after a few decades of oblivion, the thought of George Santayana (1863–1952), a major figure of the so-called Golden Age of American Philosophy, reappeared as subject of academic interest. It is believed that Santayana’s originality within the intellectual milieu of the dominant at that time in Anglo-Saxon context pragmatist and analytical thought contributed to this delayed reception. This text, being part of a broader project, looks at the concept of „the self” emerging from (...) Santayana’s work, with particular emphasis on its temporal intricacies. Interpretative movement, which according to my thesis is a requirement posited by life itself, provides for subjective unity and is expressed by the recurrent term of „mask” as a trace of human existence. The idea of playing out one’s facticity implies the question „how?”, which in turn justifies the use of an aesthetic concept of „grace” which may be linked with the idea of authentic existence. The juxtaposition with elements of Heidegger’s philosophy, which is a novelty in research, throws some light on Santayana’s fascination with German thinker and allows to highlight the hermeneutic-existential side of his thought, which has been underestimated by scholarship so far. (shrink)

In her introduction to Life as Insinuation: George Santayana’s Hermeneutics of Finite Life and Human Self, Katarzyna Kremplewska states that the general aim of her book is “reconstructing George Santayana’s conception of human self as embedded in a larger project of philosophy of life” (xi). More specifically, she explains that she is undertaking an inquiry “into the latter in the context of the former” (xvi). Her aim is not only to reconstruct Santayana’s conception of the self, but also (...) sho... (shrink)

This article uncovers the intellectual traditions behind Dio Chrysostom's Oration 20: On Anachôrêsis. The examination reveals a variety of subtexts and traditions with which Dio engages, and shows that at its core the text inspects three types of lives promoted by three philosophical schools: Epicurean, Stoic and Peripatetic. They are never referred to directly, however, which raises questions concerning Dio's strategy of not acknowledging the sources of the ideas with which he engages. The article also develops our understanding of anachôrêsis (...) and the controversies surrounding it in pagan antiquity. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that the machinery of multicultural societies and liberal democratic systems is dependent upon various forms of dialogue - dialogue between political parties, between different social groups, between the ruling and the ruled. But what are the conditions of a democratic dialogue and how does the philosophical dialogic approach apply to practice? Exploring the multifaceted nature of the concepts of dialogue and democracy, and critically examining materializations of dialogue in social life, this book offers a variety of (...) perspectives on the theoretical and empirical interface between democracy and dialogue. (shrink)

In this paper the authors address the issue of investments made by family businesses. Their study attempted to verify the level of investments made by Polish family businesses in comparison with the level of investments made by Polish non-family businesses. The study focused on the analysis of investment flows of Polish listed companies included in the WIG index for the years 2006-2018. A total of 233 companies were analyzed, including 177 non-family businesses and 56 family businesses. The results corroborated the (...) argument that Polish listed non-family businesses invest much more money than family businesses. It was also observed that only a small percentage of companies in both groups invest their finances in research and development. (shrink)

The research concerned the determinants of social competencies, which are significant indicators of the quality of interpersonal relations. The aim of the study was to verify the connection between social competencies and temperamental traits. The respondent group included 220 university students of different faculties aged 19-24. Social competencies were measured with the use of a Social Competencies Questionnaire by Anna Matczak, while temperamental traits were measured with The Formal Characteristics of Behaviour-Temperament Inventory, by Bogdan Zawadzki and Jan Strelau. The research (...) proved that activity, emotional reactivity and sensory sensitivity are significant predictors of social competencies. The predictive value of these traits differs depending on the kind of measured competency. (shrink)

We show that a finitely generated protoalgebraic strict universal Horn class that is filter-distributive is finitely based. Equivalently, every protoalgebraic and filter-distributive multidimensional deductive system determined by a finite set of finite matrices can be presented by finitely many axioms and rules.

We show that a finitely generated protoalgebraic strict universal Horn class that is filter-distributive is finitely based. Equivalently, every protoalgebraic and filter-distributive multidimensional deductive system determined by a finite set of finite matrices can be presented by finitely many axioms and rules.

The aim of the paper is to explore the interrelation between persuasion tactics and properties of speech acts. We investigate two types of arguments ad: ad hominem and ad baculum. We show that with both of these tactics, the structures that play a key role are not inferential, but rather ethotic, i.e., related to the speaker’s character and trust. We use the concepts of illocutionary force and constitutive conditions related to the character or status of the speaker in order to (...) explain the dynamics of these two techniques. In keeping with the research focus of the Polish School of Argumentation, we examine how the pragmatic and rhetorical aspects of the force of ad hominem and ad baculum arguments exploit trust in the speaker’s status to influence the audience’s cognition. (shrink)

This paper is devoted to clarifying Hannah Arendt’s concept of political freedom by the means of analysing its structure. My analysis proceeds in three steps. Firstly, I distinguish a pre-political concept of freedom as exercising spontaneity, which is at the root of Arendt’s understanding of political freedom. Secondly, I analyse her account of freedom as exercising action and indicate its relationship to the elementary freedom of spontaneity. Arendt endowed action with a distinguished importance, since she assumed that it is the (...) only activity within the vita activa, which has a special anthropological and axiological significance. According to Arendt, only action allows one to truly experience the fundamental aspect of the human condition, which is the fact of human plurality; it is also the only activity which allows one to exercise specifically public principles, such as solidarity, equality, or justice. Thirdly, I indicate how these two accounts of freedom translate into Arendt’s concept of political freedom. This analysis reveals that the Arendtian concept of political freedom is markedly original. She did not define it in a usual manner, i.e. through indicating bundles of legal and political rights which determine the accepted scope of participation in the public affairs. The inherent part of her concept of political freedom is a specific account of how it must be exercised. Political freedom understood as the participation in governance exercised through action is not merely an activity of instrumental, but also anthropological and axiological importance, which is due to the special anthropological and axiological meaning of action. In the final section, I discuss the practical dimension of Arendt’s theory. She doubted whether the traditional representative democracy is capable of accommodating her ‘rich’ ideal of political freedom, therefore she proposed an alternative account of political system based on councils. I formulate objections against this proposition and demonstrate that councils would presumably fail to accommodate Arendt’s exacting account of political freedom. (shrink)

This paper is devoted to clarifying Hannah Arendt’s concept of political freedom by the means of analysing its structure. My analysis proceeds in three steps. Firstly, I distinguish a pre-political concept of freedom as exercising spontaneity, which is at the root of Arendt’s understanding of political freedom. Secondly, I analyse her account of freedom as exercising action and indicate its relationship to the elementary freedom of spontaneity. Arendt endowed action with a distinguished importance, since she assumed that it is the (...) only activity within the vita activa, which has a special anthropological and axiological significance. According to Arendt, only action allows one to truly experience the fundamental aspect of the human condition, which is the fact of human plurality; it is also the only activity which allows one to exercise specifically public principles, such as solidarity, equality, or justice. Thirdly, I indicate how these two accounts of freedom translate into Arendt’s concept of political freedom. This analysis reveals that the Arendtian concept of political freedom is markedly original. She did not define it in a usual manner, i.e. through indicating bundles of legal and political rights which determine the accepted scope of participation in the public affairs. The inherent part of her concept of political freedom is a specific account of how it must be exercised. Political freedom understood as the participation in governance exercised through action is not merely an activity of instrumental, but also anthropological and axiological importance, which is due to the special anthropological and axiological meaning of action. In the final section, I discuss the practical dimension of Arendt’s theory. She doubted whether the traditional representative democracy is capable of accommodating her ‘rich’ ideal of political freedom, therefore she proposed an alternative account of political system based on councils. I formulate objections against this proposition and demonstrate that councils would presumably fail to accommodate Arendt’s exacting account of political freedom. (shrink)

The Uppsala School in philosophy and the Vienna Circle are prima facie similar currents in contemporary philosophy. Both reject metaphysics, claim that reality is a spatio­‑temporal realm and adhere to noncognitivism in terms of values. However, justifications of these assumptions are quite different. In the following article we reconstruct main theses of both mentioned currents and then we indicate their impact on one of the major jurisprudential movements, namely Scandinavian Legal Realism. We focus on Alf Ross’ legal philosophy, as it (...) was an attempt to accommodate both: the philosophy of the Uppsala School and of the Vienna Circle. We trace those two sources of inspiration in Ross’ theory of legal validity and of legal concepts. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide a model that allows the representation and analysis of circularity in ethotic structures, i.e. in communication structures related to the speaker’s character and in particular, his credibility. The paper studies three types of cycles: in self-referential sentences, embedded testimony and ethotic begging the question. It is shown that standard models allow the reconstruction of the circularities only if those circular utterances are interpreted as ethotic arguments. Their alternative, assertive interpretation requires enriching the (...) existing models with a purely ethotic component related to the credibility of the performer of any (not necessarily argumentative) speech act. (shrink)

Frankfurt-style examples aim to undermine the principle that moral responsibility requires the ability to do otherwise, which in turn requires the availability of alternate possibilities.1 They are thus considered a reason for refuting incompatibilism. One lesson drawn from Frankfurt-style examples is exemplified by the compatibilist account of Fischer and Ravizza.2 They accept the impact of Frankfurt-style cases and hold that the incompatibilist requirement of regulative control, which involves the agent’s ability to perform the action and her ability to perform the (...) contrary action, must be dropped. In its stead, they propose the weaker requirement of guidance control, which only demands the agent’s causal control over the action for which she is to be held responsible. (shrink)

Building on our diverse research traditions in the study of reasoning, language and communication, the Polish School of Argumentation integrates various disciplines and institutions across Poland in which scholars are dedicated to understanding the phenomenon of the force of argument. Our primary goal is to craft a methodological programme and establish organisational infrastructure: this is the first key step in facilitating and fostering our research movement, which joins people with a common research focus, complementary skills and an enthusiasm to work (...) together. This statement—the Manifesto—lays the foundations for the research programme of the Polish School of Argumentation. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the issue of truth-telling in non-fictional narratives of (in)justice. Based on examples of rape narratives, domestic abuse narratives, human trafficking narratives and asylum seeker narratives, I examine the various difficulties in telling the truth in such stories, particularly those related to various culturally conditioned ideas of how the world works, which at the same time form the basis of, among other things, legal discourse and officials’ decision-making processes. I will also demonstrate that such culturally conditioned ideas, (...) which are the basis of official discourse, can be considered within the category of both the social imaginary of the just world in the Taylorian sense of the term, and the social master narrative, which in the case of stories of (in)justice is often based on the just world hypothesis. (shrink)

This book is about beliefs, language, communication and cognition. It deals with the fundamental issue of the interpretation of the speaker's utterance expressing a belief and reporting on beliefs of other people in the form of oratio obliqua. The main aim of the book is to present a new account of the problem of interpreting utterances expressing beliefs and belief reports in terms of an approach called Default Semantics.

(Extra)Ordinary? edited by Jade Alexander and Katarzyna Bronk engages in research on the ways and means in which celebrity status has been created, controlled, dispersed and received in the past as well as the present.

Pragmatics and dialectics are two disciplines which have been amongst the first and most important partners for argument studies in the exploration of the complex realm of communication. Treating argumentation as a construct consisting of premises and conclusion allows for investigating some interesting properties of the phenomenon of reasoning, but does not capture a variety of aspects related to the usage of natural language and dialogical context in which real-life argumentation is typically embedded. This special issue explores some of the (...) fascinating research questions which emerge when we move beyond logic into the territory of the pragmatics and dialectics of argument. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that Frankfurt-style cases provide a reason for rejecting incompatibilism because they provide a reason for rejecting the requirement that the agent be able to do otherwise. One compatibilist strategy for dealing with the cases, pursued by Fischer and Ravizza, is to weaken the mentioned requirement. An analogous strategy on the part of the incompatibilist, which appears to be unexplored in the literature on moral responsibility, is exemplified in Belnap and Perloff ’s logic of agency. I show (...) how their stit theory can handle Frankfurt-style cases and defend it from Fischer’s criticism of “flicker-of-freedom” strategies. I also note some of the limitations of the stit rendition of the cases. (shrink)